Striking an excellent balance between a relationship and general-interest site, Tribe.net showcases some of the best aspects of social networking. Tribe.net's well-thought-out approach to controlling access to members and its thriving forums make it a compelling experience. Some of the service's best features, however, are hard to find; the interface needs some tweaking before the site comes out of beta.

When you join Tribe.net, you set up a personal profile with the usual basic information, along with adding photos. As you use the service, you also join different Tribes, or interest groups, which then help define your profile. Besides Tribe membership, photos, and basic facts, profiles also include a "Why you're here" section, where members can describe what they're looking for online.

One reason for members to keep visiting the site is the Tribes that they can creategroups around a vast range of topics. We found busy Tribes devoted to music, gaming, politics, and relationships, to name a few. At press time there were over 5,000 Tribes.

The Tribes resemble discussion groups, but they can be moderated by their founders, and they require membership, so you don't have to endure as many flames, or obnoxious messages. We like the ease with which you can access a particular Tribe from outside the site via a URL (for example, http://creativewriting.tribe.net gets you to the creative writing forum).

Tribe.net excels at letting members manage the depth of connections, with a good balance between privacy and accessibility. For example, you can search for other members not only by basic information, like name, gender, and profession, but also by degrees of connection ranging from immediate friends through four degrees of separation. When you log on, you see the number of connections for each degree.

We also like the ability to block members easily. This prevents unauthorized intrusions from troublemakers or the inadvertently (or unwisely) invited. In fact, Tribe.net offers excellent control over privacy and contact settings. You can selectively hide your gender, age, location, and online status in your profile. And when blocking messages from members of your network, you can elect to maintain them as "friends," so that you don't lose the part of your network they link you into. Of course, you can easily delete former friends from your network as well.

There are two other ways in which Tribe.net's fine control can be immediately useful. First, the service includes listings for merchandise, services, and job opportunities. When you add a listing, you can specify its scope and whether it should reach your immediate friends or the entire network. (At press time, site-wide selling was free, but a pricing scheme that is scaled by volume is planned.) Listers can also specify that e-mail be sent to selected friends (though we hope this is used carefully, to avoid spam).

Tribe also features event announcements. Members can advertise upcoming parties, concerts, business icebreakers, or other events easily and reach select audiences. Judging by the range of upcoming events featured on the site, Tribe.net already has an active following in many cities.

Tribe.net is a worthwhile implementation of social networking that mixes pleasure and a little e-business to keep members coming back. The site will be a strong contender in the personal-network space if it can make up some of the distance from Friendster's enormous head start.

Tribe.net (beta)

About the Author

Richard V. Dragan, a contributing editor of PC Magazine, has written over 250 articles and reviews for the magazine and other Ziff Davis publications since 1992. From 1994 to 1998 he authored a programming column for Computer Shopper. He has taught C++ and Windows programming at Columbia University since 1990, and Java since 1997.

Tribe.net (beta)

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